


Marked

by singingwithoutwords



Series: Marked [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2663207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingwithoutwords/pseuds/singingwithoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Three thin rings, one inside the other like a target at the nape of his neck.<br/>An hourglass on his left hip, right where the bone is closest to skin.<br/>Two small black arrows crossed just above and to the left of the arc reactor, visible even through the scars.<br/>The outline of a tri-foil on the arch of his right foot.<br/>Jagged lines like striking lightning crawling down his right forearm.</i>
</p><p>Tony Stark has five soulmarks on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marked

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. I don't know anything.  
> /hides

**Steve**

Bucky used to tease him something awful, how God had put a target on him because He knew that was what Steve was gonna make of himself. Steve grew up dreaming of some pretty dame with sweet eyes and a target of her own, hidden under her hair. Not that he'd mind if his soulmate was a fella, folks didn't mind fellas together so much when soulmarks were involved, after all, but he figured it might be better if it was a dame.

Except Steve didn't really grow up much even when he grew up, and his soulmate got a bit lost under medicine and fevers and standing up to loudmouths and bullies and being too small and skinny for any dame or fella to really want him, anyway. By the time the war came he sometimes forgot he even had a soulmark at all.

After the serum, in Howard's workshop, he found his shield. It was perfectly round and just the right number of rings, and he couldn't help but wonder if maybe that target on the back of his neck might not be a target after all.

His last thought, before the ice and darkness pulled him under, was to wish whoever had a matching shield happiness without him.

 

**Natasha**

The Red Room couldn't erase soulmarks. They tried, oh how they tried, but all her life that hourglass on her left hip remained. It was always a useless thing, a little-girl daydream she was never allowed to indulge. Natalia knew her place in the world, and that place did not include a fairy tale of rescue and romance.

None of them ever compared soulmarks. They were taught to feign interest in them, to mouth the empty words of hope and desire, but they were also taught that those words were lies. There would be no happiness for the tools of the Red Room.

She learned to conceal it, to mark herself with fakes. She learned to use soulmarks as nothing but another lure, drawing in targets and doing as she was ordered with them. She learned to foil attempts to use her soulmark to identify her, and sank further and further from what any soul would ever claim as their other half.

Even after the Red Room she never bothered to look. Her soul was drowning in red, unworthy. Even if she found the matching hourglass, there would be no happy ending for the likes of her.

 

**Clint**

Clint used to pray he'd find his soulmate, even as a little kid. He used to ask each night to be taken away, to be happy forever, pressing his hand over the little arrows above his heart. As time wore on and he got older, though, the prayers faded out. Hoping and praying weren't going to save him- he had to save himself.

He had good eyes and arrows on his chest, so archery only made sense. At first he wondered with each bulls-eye, each cheer from the crowd, if someone was watching with rapt attention and arrows over their own heart. He wondered if his soulmate could see, was amazed and would be proud of him.

That daydream went away in time, too. Life wore him hard, making him hard in turn, until he rolled his eyes at soulmarks and the whole idea of soulmates. Until he stopped touching his mark like it was a talisman that could protect him. He stopped thinking about it, stopped wasting his time dreaming.

He didn't need a soulmate, anyway.

 

**Bruce**

Bruce didn't even know what the mark on the bottom of his right foot was for the first four or five years of his life. He just knew his mother liked to rub her thumb against it sometimes, holding him close and humming under her breath. He never asked about it. It had to be like the mark on his mother's shoulder, the one just like his father had, and those marks made his father so mad. Best not to say anything.

He did eventually learn about soulmarks and soulmates, and he felt sorry for whoever had the mark to match his, whoever was saddled with him. While his classmates chattered among themselves about how wonderful it would be when they found their soulmate, Bruce would silently wonder what his soulmate had done to deserve being paired with him.

Betty told him that was his father talking, that he was wonderful and beautiful and she wished she had that tri-foil on her foot instead of a feather just below her belly button. He came so, so close to believing her, before they managed to create the Other Guy.

With a monster sleeping just below his skin, his own worth didn't even matter anymore- seeking out his soulmate was just too dangerous. He would just have to live without.

 

**Thor**

Soulmarks were rare, precious things on Asgard; only a lucky few a generation were blessed with them. Thor grew with a webbing of whisper-thin lines down his right forearm, a promise of another to whom he belonged, the one soul in all the Nine Realms tied forever to his. Legends and bedtime stories and books that Loki discovered told him of other souls so blessed, of the completeness he would find when he found his soulmate.

He made himself a paramount warrior, a charming and likeable prince, someone pleasing to his other half. No matter how the years slipped by with no sign of his match, he did not despair. He would find his soulmate when the time was right, he was certain. He had only to be patient.

His exile to Midgard caused his faith to falter, just a moment, at the depths of his own misunderstanding. His exile bore some small fruit, not only in his redemption in his father's eyes, but his new-found knowledge that all Midgardians bore soulmarks.

He chose to aid and protect Midgard because it was the right thing to do, but he would not deny that the thought that he might also be protecting his soulmate did weigh somewhat on his mind.

 

**Tony**

They thought there was something wrong with Tony at first, when he was born with five tiny marks on his skin. It was pretty much accepted scientific fact that everyone had one soulmate, singular; some extremely rare outliers had two. More than that was impossible, yet there Tony lay in his crib, five soulmarks plain for all to see.

His mother thought he was a miracle. His father thought he was broken. The older he got, the more his father's voice tended to drown out his mother's. She never spoke any softer, but it sounded fainter and fainter to him as the lesson was drilled into his head that no one could ever know that Tony Stark was a freak.

He went off to college, and a girl sold the story to the tabloids, and Howard was furious, because now everyone knew, and before they could even fight it out properly, both his parents died. His mother's whispers of miracles were buried with her, under the avalanche of disapproval and scorn.

It was useless to wonder. No point in wasting the time. Statistically, he had only a one in seven chance of meeting a single one of his soulmates, forget about all five, so why bother?

He still furnished his room with a bed big enough for six. Just in case.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens if you leave me near a computer unsupervised. orz


End file.
